Love them, they are harmless

by Sajitha Prematunge

It's said that there is no medicine for skink bites. In spite of all this talk about skink bites being incurable and them being depicted as horrible monsters in many nations, they are perfectly harmless and quite intriguing. Skinks are not dangerous to humans or other animals and will only bite if provoked.

Sri Lanka has an amazing diversity and highly endemic array of reptiles, though only little research has been done on the taxonomy, ecology and distribution of reptiles like skinks. The lack of clearly illustrated publications, the similarity in their overall colour patterns and the complex identification characters have resulted in field identification often being confused.
 

Two new species of skinks, Lankascincus sripadensis and Lankascincus munindradasai has been discovered from Peak Wilderness Sanctuary by L. J. Mendis Wickramasinghe, Roshan Rodrigo, Nihal Dayawansa and U. L. D. Jayantha.

Lankascincus sripadensis is the largest member in the genus. The Lankascincus is an endemic skink lizard genus that consists of six other Sri Lankan skink species namely Lankascincus fallax, Lankascincus deignani, Lankascincus taprobanensis, Lankascincus deraniyagalae, Lankascincus gansi and Lankascincus taylori. The genus has a distribution from coastal planes to central high lands that are at the mercy of different climatic zones.

Although mostly found among leaf litter and are generally considered to be terrestrial skinks of Lankascincus genus rarely display sub arboreal behaviour. They lay two eggs at a time and hide them under stones, debris or leaf litter. They have pointed heads, slender bodies and strong short legs which can be considered as evolutionary adaptations.

Lankascincus fallax is the type species of the genus, with a wide distribution around the island.

The new species Lankascincus munindradasai, has a medium sized, moderately long body and a depressed, narrow and elongated head distinct from the neck; long snout and tail longer than the rest of the body. The back of its head is dark brown with random black spots.

The back of its body is olive brown. Four longitudinally oriented, irregular, broken lines that start from back of the neck diminish beyond the base of its tail, very distinct in the mid dorsal area.

Another line starts from the back of the eye and diminishes towards mid tail. The species is named after the late Dr. D. I. Amith Munindradasa, the former Head of the Department of Electronics Engineering, Moratuwa and scientist who worked for the betterment of the country.

Although an electronic engineer by profession he worked in various disciplines, a lover of nature, who was also involved in the discovery of five gecko species previously carried in the Sunday Observer, and worked as a silent yet effective conservationist.

The names assigned for the species in native languages Sinhala, Tamil and English are respectively Munindradasage lakhekanala, Munindradasavin arene and Munindradasa's Lanka skink.

The body of the Lankascincus sripadensis, the other newly discovered species, is moderately long and robust, with a long, depressed and narrow head distinct from the neck.

It also has a long snout and its eyes are larger than its ears, same as Lankascincus munindradasai, and tail longer than the length of the body.The back of the head of Lankascincus sripadensis is olive brown with a longitudinally oriented mid-dorsal dark brown line starting from the neck and diminishes beyond the base of tail.

Another line starts from the back of the eye and diminish towards the mid tail. The dorsal sides of its limbs are dark brown with intermittent white dots. Sripakandu duburu hekanala, Sivanolipathmalai arene and Sripada forest skink are its Sinhala, Tamil and English names respectively.

Peak Wilderness sanctuary, where these two new species were found has the only uninterrupted forest cover of altitudinal graded forest types ranging from lowland mixed Dipterocarp forests to Montane Cloud forests.

With forests ranging from Tropical Lowland Forests to Tropical Montane Forests Peak Wilderness sanctuary is very significant for richness in its biodiversity. Peak Wilderness, otherwise known as Sripada sanctuary is a heaven for endemic and threatened bird species of Sri Lanka.

But this sanctuary, the home to such an abundance of wild life, is not immune to disruptive human activities such as over exploitation of forest resources and discharge of pollutants. The area is also subject to forest die back phenomenon and small land slides.

Every year, trees of the surrounding forest is felled illegally as a source of building material for tea boutiques, leading all the way up to Adams peak during the pilgrim season. The status of the skinks in the endangered list is unknown.

If their habitat is at risk so are they. And just imagine how many other new species await their discovery in our country's pristine wilderness.

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